Public Lecture - Solidarity and Responsibility to Protect
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Speaker: Professor Noam Chomsky, 'One of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today'
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Date: Wednesday, 3 April, 7.30pm (SOLD OUT)
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Venue: Royal Dublin Society (RDS), Concert Hall, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4
Professor Noam Chomsky, one of the most critically engaged public intellectual alive, delivered inaugural lecture on 3 April, at Royal Dublin Society (RDS) for Front Line Defenders in partnership with UCD School of Philosophy and TCD Policy Institute.
Front Line Defenders is an organisation dedicated exclusively to the security and protection of human rights defenders at risk but part of its mandate is also to provide a space in which independent critical voices can be heard.
Professor Chomsky is a US political theorist and activist, and Institute Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and his work has also had a profound impact on computer science, mathematics and psychology. It is widely know that Professor Chomsky’s legacy extends beyond the realm of academia. Professor Chomsky continues to be an unapologetic critic of both American foreign policy and its ambitions for geopolitical hegemony and the neo-liberal turn of global capitalism. Chomsky is also an incisive critic of the ideological role of the mainstream corporate mass media, which, he maintains, "manufactures consent" toward the desirability of capitalism and the political powers supportive of it.
In RDS lecture Professor Chomsky spoke on the topic of Solidarity and Responsibility to Protect. Professor Chomsky addressed the challenges which confront human rights defenders and activists seeking to advance a global accountability and justice agenda in the face of resistance by powerful actors within the state, media and wider society. Over the course of a two hour address, Professor Chomsky reflected upon his life-long activism in support of human rights activists in the Global South, as well as offered a detailed critique of the “emerging norm” ‘Responsibility to Protect’ or R2P as a justification for military intervention. In a stimulating Q & A session, Professor Chomsky also offered his thoughts on the record of the Obama administration, drone technology, and the deeply deleterious consequences of economic austerity on the European social contract.
To see the lecture please click here.